The Atlanta Branch RSCDS, Celebrating 50 years

Dance Title	Type	Deviser (or Editor/Publisher), Date, Interpreter	Music Performers	Formation
Marietta Square Reel		Hidemi Graves 2025		Square permutation: 4123
Run for the Roses		Sarah Craighead ~2026		Square permutation: 4123

The Donside Book

Dance Title	Type	Deviser (or Editor/Publisher), Date, Interpreter	Music Performers	Formation
The Dancing Master		John Drewry 1989		J4×96 Square

Impropriety Vol. 2

Dance Title	Type	Deviser (or Editor/Publisher), Date, Interpreter	Music Performers	Formation
Through the Looking Glass		Chris Sackett/Brooke Friendly 2006		Square

Rondel Book of Scottish Country Dances

Dance Title	Type	Deviser (or Editor/Publisher), Date, Interpreter	Music Performers	Formation
1314		John Drewry 1967		Square

RSCDS Book 53

Dance Title	Type	Deviser (or Editor/Publisher), Date, Interpreter	Music Performers	Formation
Portincaple Oak		Anne Thorn 2011		Square
Schiehallion		Hugh A Thurston 1971		Square

RSCDS Book 54

Dance Title	Type	Deviser (or Editor/Publisher), Date, Interpreter	Music Performers	Formation
A Driving Reel		Lizzie Wratten ~2025		3 Couple Circle permutation: 231
The Tea Pottery		Duncan Brown ~2020		Square

Woodhall Book 4, Serendipity

Dance Title	Type	Deviser (or Editor/Publisher), Date, Interpreter	Music Performers	Formation
The House Keys of Lisbon		Murrough Landon 2020		3 Couple Circle permutation: 312

Warning: The figures for each dance is generated programmatically by regular expression matching and may be in error. Also, for old dances, they reflect the figures used by the interpreter which may not match those of the deviser.

Schiehallion Reel

An online definition may be found here.

Bars: 16.

A Schiehallion Reel starts in a square formation with the women facing out. All couples do the same thing. In the first two bars the men move in toward the center and then out to the place where the woman to their right started, giving left shoulder to the man on their right. The women loop outside of the set and come in where their partner used to be.

In this figure the men follow the woman who starts to their right, while the women follow their partners. After every two bars each dancer should be where the person they are following was at the start of those two bars.

In bars 2-4 the men now loop outside the set, while the women move toward the center and then out to where their partner was.

After 4 bars all dancers in the set will have rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

This process continues, after 8 bars they are diametrically opposite where they started, and after 16 bars they are back home.

History

The Scottish Country Dance Database has a long note about the dance Schiehallion, saying that a version of the dance was originally devised in the 1950s, containing the eponymous reel, but the dance itself was much changed in the final version published in 1971.

They also note that although Thurston thought the figure original, it is very similar to an Axum reel.

While they may be topologically equivalent they look quite different to me.

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My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.